Pumpkin Fest 2014: Dozens of Staties Attack Three Innocent, Teen Students
Ryan McLellan and his friends never hurt anyone or destroyed any property on the night of Pumpkin Fest 2014. However, that didn’t stop dozens of state police from swarming and attacking the three young men as they attempted to go to the Campus Convenience store on the corner of the block where their dorm was located. Earlier in the day and night there were riots in the neighborhood, but by the early morning hours when Ryan and his friends were attacked, there was nothing happening.
Well, I shouldn’t say nothing. Their neighborhood was being occupied by a very large group of armed men who were in a mood to order around and kidnap anyone they darn well wanted. Here’s the original video I released at the time, which shows the arrests and surrounding scene in full. Just minutes prior to their attack, but before the huge throng of state police had been brought in, I had been in the exact same place as the young men. Though the cops who were there at the time prohibited me from crossing into Winchester St., (for no apparent reason other than arbitrary control), they did not tackle and arrest me, like was done to Ryan and his friends.
Sadly, despite his being a clear case of police abuse and having an attorney willing to take the case to trial and beyond, Ryan took the plea deal, having a nonsense “resisting arrest” charge conditionally nolle-prossed in return for his guilty plea to “disorderly conduct”. These are two of the police’s favorite charges to throw at someone who they don’t like, but has otherwise done nothing wrong.
They were going to the convenience store. It was past midnight and they were hungry. When told to “GO HOME!”, they seemed confused – after all, they had committed no crimes, and further, there were other normal people walking down Winchester St, so why were they allowed to walk somewhere but not Ryan and friends?
When they didn’t turn immediately and high-tail it out of there, the thronging mass of state police officers pounced and violently took the young men to the pavement. A parent of one of Ryan’s friends said:
“My son has had 2 MRIs bad concussion lives with headaches everyday, dislocated his shoulder, sprained ankle and bruised the inside of his mouth from kneeling on his face.”
During sentencing, judge Edward J Burke fined him $1,000 suspended for two years on condition of good behavior, gave him 50 hours of community service, and lectured him as though he were somehow as bad as the people who had committed violence or property destruction, despite him never being accused of doing any such thing!
It was sad to watch. If you’re ever facing criminal charges, especially in the case of police abuse – please consider not taking the plea deal. Taking the plea only encourages more bad behavior from the police and “justice” system like this and ensures you’ll never be able to challenge what they did to you.
Finally, before you accuse me of being anti-police, remember it was my video I gave to Keene police that led to the capture and conviction of people who actually committed violent and property crime during the Pumpkin Fest riots. I am fine with the police going after real criminals, but not peaceful people like Ryan and his friends.
Multiple liberty activists responded to the scene after local independent journalist Jared Goodell posted the news that armed police were on Central Square. (Goodell’s personal facebook profile is quickly becoming a go-to destination for breaking news in Keene.) Keene police kept the initial call from the alleged hostage-taker off of their two-way radio system, in what was the beginning of a campaign to preclude the public from actually knowing anything about what was happening in their midst.
All people in the streets knew was the police were hiding behind brick walls, brandishing guns and observing the block of buildings that includes 39 Central Square. To their credit, the Keene police were not preventing people from taking the risk of walking downtown, but they were at the same time not informing anyone about the risk that may have been present.
When asked, multiple pairs of the officers surrounding the building would deny any knowledge of why they were there. Why lie? After I asked three sets of officers what was happening, I finally got the barest minimum of information out of Michael “Pepper” Kopcha. He admitted there may be a situation in the building, but again, gave no information as to what danger may be present.
There are arguments both for and against how they responded, but there’s no good reason to keep people in the dark about what is happening, especially if they want people to believe they are “serving and protecting” them. (more…)
This morning while I was enjoying some breakfast with fellow activists at the Keene State College dining commons, we noticed two men in military olive-green walking quickly across campus. One appeared to have a machine gun. Quickly we learned the school was on lockdown as rumor was that a man had used a gun in a “domestic incident” that happened somewhere off-campus.
Apparently the fact that someone used a gun somewhere in the vicinity of a college is now reason to shut down an entire campus. Perhaps that’s because weapons are banned from on campus, meaning that all law-abiding people are disarmed and would be easy targets for a gun-toting madman, who would not give a damn about the school’s gun restrictions.
New Hampshire is a very safe place because of its relative gun freedom compared to other states. It’s a shame that the good people on campus are not free to defend themselves. The law really needs to change on this matter, to restore the right to self-defense on school property. This police state stuff is getting ridiculous. Don’t the cops understand that this is New Hampshire and people have guns everywhere off campus?
The suspect, known as a local white supremacist scumbag.
Just because some local white supremacist loser fires a gun in a domestic dispute doesn’t mean the campus is in jeopardy. Even if it was in jeopardy, their current safety measures will most certainly result in bloodshed of campus staff, at minimum. Allow me to explain.
So, we finish up our meal and decide to exit the cafeteria, despite people telling us the school bureaucrats were standing at the doors, trying to discourage people from leaving the building. James Cleaveland, Conan, and I all left anyway. One lady got in front of me and pleaded with me to stay in the building. I told her no thanks, that I was fine, and walked out the door. As I was walking across campus, every single glass door to the campus buildings were being “guarded” by campus staff.
Put another way, a madman with a gun could easily slaughter multiple campus staff, who of course are completely unarmed and essentially standing in the open. It’s all security theater. Any determined killer would have no shortage of helpless targets on a college campus. The dining commons itself holds hundreds of students, who would be fish in a barrel if the would-be shooter merely stood outside the East side of the building, which is all-windows.
Given that murder wasn’t the suspect’s intentions (he is accused of firing a gun in the air, not directly at anyone), no one on campus was in danger – this time. Therefore, the cops get to look like heroes for tromping around campus with their weaponry, acting like they’re the thin blue line protecting the defenseless (because of the state’s rules) college students. Had this guy wanted to hurt college students, he’d have come on campus and done that right away, before police were called, and no one would have been able to stop him, unless of course they too were carrying illegally on campus. (more…)
For years, Free Keene has provided the community service of a Keene police scanner feed, which was highly-listened during the Pumpkin Fest riots, with over 300 simultaneous streams being served that night.
